Help with setting up a Euro account?

nickers

I would like to set up a Euro account as I am selling property in Euros and the exchange rate is bad at the moment, so thought I would hold on to the Euros for a while. Does anyone know which is a good account? I have looked at the Nationwide Euro acct which seems OK but none of them seem to pay above 2% interest and some have all sorts of other charges and conditions attached. Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

Jake'sGran

nickers wrote:

I would like to set up a Euro account as I am selling property in Euros and the exchange rate is bad at the moment, so thought I would hold on to the Euros for a while. Does anyone know which is a good account? I have looked at the Nationwide Euro acct which seems OK but none of them seem to pay above 2% interest and some have all sorts of other charges and conditions attached. Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

When I was searching for best rates for buying Euros last year I came across a lot of ads for banks offering Euro accounts. Can't remember all the names so perhaps you could do the same exercise i.e. Google something like "buying Euros" and see what you come across. I imagine the most likely ones are foreign banks with branches in the UK.

Snow_Dog

Unfortunately the UK banks dont seem to be very well set up for euro accounts.

We used to have a euro account with Lloyds, it didnt qualify for the free business banking, the service charges were high, managed from a central office and the branch's couldn't even see the account, didnt pay interest. In short, awful.

When we spoke to the business manager about it he agreed but simply said thats the way it is. This was about 2 years ago now so things may have improved but I doubt it very much.

Perhaps you might want to look at banks that have specialist arms dealing in offshore accounts, they may have better products available to them.

MikeLB

I did have one with HBOS for a while - but was a nightmare to run. I gave up after a year. The branches never knew how to process any Euro Cash Deposits, when they did manage it sometimes the money went walkies for weeks one end (One deposit was sent to Amex by mistake). That was 4 years ago. I would hope it was easier now but they certainly didnt make it easy at all.

Cook_County

There are accounts offshore - and indeed in the Eurozone - offering higher rates of interest.

Don't forget that if you make a profit in foreign currency that this is subject to UK tax.